Kakuzo Okakura

Kakuzo Okakura (1863–1913), also known as Okakura Tenshin, was a Japanese scholar and art critic who interpreted Japan to the West and defended its traditional arts at home. Born in Yokohama to a merchant family, he learned English young and studied at Tokyo Imperial University, where he met Ernest Fenollosa and joined him in surveying and preserving Japan's Buddhist art. He headed the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, founded the Japan Art Institute and from 1904 worked for Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. His books in English, The Ideals of the East, The Awakening of Japan and The Book of Tea, presented Asian aesthetics and philosophy to Western readers.